Pynchon and Catholicism

[Mark Kohut]

Eric Fromm in *Escape From Freedom* says that the feeling
of 'predestination" ala Luther and Calvin although present in Acquinas'
Catholicism because
of the understanding of God's omniscience is very different, producing a
very different
character structure overall.

He quotes Acquinas cutely: Aquinas saying doing extra good things sorta
speeds up
the predestination of oneself. (my paraphrase).

Anyway, unlike the self-hating Protestants---they had to in order to hate
so many others
so totally, Eric says--Catholics hated themselves less (in general).

He has a strong economic semi-determinism in this book, one that recent
scholars think they
have shown Pynchon being influenced by and I can get that. Eric sorta
argues that the Puritanical
Protestantism developed out of the insecurity of late medieval capitalism
and not vice versa or not
unrelatedly, of course.

He also says later that Mickey Mouse, the presentation of his littleness
always endangered by larger fiercer
forces, is a creation of the industrial capitalism that makes us all
rootless and at the mercy of forces beyond our control.

On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 10:05 PM John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Interesting. I definitely would have pegged Fitzgerald as a Catholic
> and Hemingway not (although I see he did convert to Catholicism at
> some point in order to marry a Catholic).
> Some of the defining features of Catholicism that I've heard
> distinguish it from other strains of Christianity include:
> - a much greater emphasis on ritual, with masses delivered in much
> more obtuse and convoluted language
> - greater emphasis on symbols, statues, icons
> - a massively more significant role accorded to Jesus's mother Mary...
> in fact at one point Mary was worshipped more than Jesus and the
> authorities had to step in a reel that back
> - Predominantly Catholic countries tended to favour hot chocolate
> while Protestant countries jumped on the coffee train
> - Historically, Protestants tended to think of Catholics as
> over-the-top weirdos while Catholics thought of Protestants as
> straight-laced and boring
>
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 8:33 PM Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
> >
> >
> > "We showed up once at a party, not a masquerade party, in disguise---he
> > as Hemingway, I as Scott Fitzgerald, each of us aware that the other had
> > been through a phase of enthusiasm for his respective author."
> >
> > Thomas Pynchon: Introduction (Richard Farina: Been Down So Long It Looks
> > Like Up To Me)
> >
> > + ... F. Scott Fitzgerald was a Catholic. He was in many ways a “bad
> > Catholic,” to use Walker Percy’s tongue-in-cheek phrase, but he was a
> > Catholic nonetheless. He was born and baptized a Catholic and lies
> > buried as a Catholic. Where his soul is now is anyone’s guess; James
> > Dickey even wrote a poem called “Entering Scott’s Night” that imagines
> > Fitzgerald in purgatory.
> > Most people, even Catholics, don’t know that Fitzgerald was a Roman
> > Catholic. They know that he was an alcoholic. They know he was married
> > to the beautiful and doomed Zelda. They know that he worked furiously to
> > make a living as a writer, whether it was for Hollywood or popular
> > magazines. Yet few people know that Fitzgerald’s Catholicism shaped his
> > personal identity and in many ways his vision of the United States.
> > Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St. Paul, Minn., and named after his
> > distant cousin, Francis Scott Key, the composer of “The Star Spangled
> > Banner.” Most of his childhood was spent in Buffalo, N.Y., where he
> > attended two Catholic schools. Fitzgerald was so precocious that one
> > school allowed him to attend only a half day of school and permitted him
> > to study independently. Further schooling took place in St. Paul and
> > Hackensack, N.J. Fitzgerald attended college at Princeton, but left in
> > 1917 to join the Army. While training near Montgomery, Ala., he met
> > Zelda at a party. They were married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New
> > York in 1920. Their only child, Frances, was born the following year.
> > After his celebrated stay in Paris, Fitzgerald published “The Great
> > Gatsby” in 1925. Fifteen years later, after an agonizing marriage, a
> > series of publishing disappointments, and deteriorating health due to
> > his alcoholism, Fitzgerald died in Hollywood in 1940 at the young age of
> 44.
> > Before his death, Fitzgerald had made it known that he wished to be
> > buried in Baltimore, which he considered his ancestral and spiritual
> > home. Yet because of his drinking, his sordid novels, and his marriage
> > to a Protestant, the Church would not permit him to be buried in a
> > Catholic cemetery. Fitzgerald was buried instead in a Protestant
> > cemetery in Maryland.
> > For over three decades Frances had struggled for permission to move
> > Fitzgerald’s body to St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Baltimore, and in
> > 1975 the request was finally granted. Fitzgerald was at last where he
> > had wanted to be, in sacred Catholic ground. Yet the students who
> > continued to read Fitzgerald’s novels throughout the decades after his
> > death knew little, if anything, about his religion. One of Fitzgerald’s
> > early biographers essentially declared that Fitzgerald’s Catholicism was
> > irrelevant.
> > Hindsight and some recent discoveries have shown the fallacy of that
> > assertion.
> > Though Fitzgerald admitted to the critic Edmund Wilson that “I am
> > ashamed to say that my Catholicism is scarcely more than a memory,” his
> > choice of words implies that he still identified with the faith, that he
> > missed it, and that it obviously had shaped his imagination. Perhaps
> > Fitzgerald himself forgot for a moment one of the great lessons to be
> > learned from his work: the things that mean most to us persist in the
> > memory.
> > Like much great modern Catholic art and literature, the references to
> > Catholicism in Fitzgerald’s work are usually subtle. The best example,
> > as many people have suggested, is the wonderful image of the eyes of Dr.
> > T.J. Eckleburg, staring across the wasteland of ash heaps from a
> > billboard in “The Great Gatsby.” As a symbol, the eyes become like the
> > gaze of God surveying the modern world.
> > Yet there are three overt references to Catholicism in Fitzgerald’s
> > short stories, the fiction he wrote primarily to make a living. One
> > story, “Absolution,” is a vivid portrayal of the Church before Vatican
> > II, which demonstrates the discrepancy between the letter and spirit of
> > the law. Another story, just discovered and recently published in The
> > New Yorker magazine (6 August 2012), is “Thank You for the Light,” a
> > one-page story about the Virgin Mary interceding for a woman who
> > desperately needs a cigarette. It’s a funny story. It also affirms the
> > possibility for the miraculous.
> > A final story, in the collection “Flappers and Philosophers,” is
> > “Benediction,” which is about a young woman who stops to visit her
> > brother in a Catholic seminary while she is on her way to meet a lover.
> > One exchange in the story is particularly telling. The woman, Lois, has
> > admitted to her brother that her Catholicism no longer matters to her.
> > And yet her brother replies, “I’m not shocked, Lois. I understand better
> > than you think. We all go through those times. But I know it’ll come out
> > all right, child. There’s that gift of faith that we have, you and I,
> > that’ll carry us past the bad spots.” Indeed, the brother requests, “I
> > want you to pray for me sometimes, Lois. I think your prayers would be
> > about what I need.”
> > In the wake of “The Great Gatsby” movie release, St. Mary’s Cemetery in
> > Baltimore reports a huge increase in visitors to Fitzgerald’s grave.
> > More people are reading Fitzgerald again, and not just students who are
> > working their way through summer reading lists. Perhaps in all the
> > recent buzz about Fitzgerald, someone should pray for him ... +
> >
> >
> https://georgiabulletin.org/commentary/2013/06/f-scott-fitzgeralds-identity-shaped-by-catholicism/
> >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>